Monday, April 17, 2006

Changes all around

I find myself gainfully employed--in a full-time manner--as the teen librarian/systems administrator for the Franklin Township Public Library. I have been working at FTPL since December, but only part-time. One of the full-time staff members is leaving, and I will be replacing her.

What does this mean? Well, a lot and not a lot. I'm really excited to work here full time. This also means we can start looking for a home and get settled a little bit. It's some great experience in two important (but very different) areas of a library. There's a lot in my background to help with me both jobs, but little actual experience in a library doing either at this point.

Now, instead of spending most of my time at the reference desk I will be spending time learning about the YA collection (and science fiction, travel, health, parenting, and computers) and figuring out what people like, what we should have, what I need to order.... I'm also in charge of creating all the programming for the teens in our library. I have a lot of exciting ideas, but I won't mention them here...yet. This means things like Summer Reading (for teens) fall under my umbrella. I have a lot to learn.

I'll also spend time maintaining patron and staff accounts, running reports, making sure the system gets updated if we create a new collection (i.e. we decide to have all the home and garden books in their own section), etc. When the library's renovation is finished, there will be a TON of work to get our books in storage back into the system.

So that's what's changed. What hasn't changed is I'm still living in NJ. The address for the zine is not changing. The zine isn't going anywhere (except to bigger and better heights that is!). Shai will return to teaching in the Fall. I'm continuing to work at a place I've been at since December so there's no new drive to learn, no new faces to learn.

While many things have changed, there's a lot that's the same. For example, with the help of Andrea I have a new title for this blog. (scroll down for the reference about me, it's the sixth from the bottom)